Hermitage Akihabara have been leaking what appears to be an Intel document showing the features of chipzilla's upcoming Z97, H97 and X99 chipset. Z97 will be the basis of the upcoming Haswell refresh CPU and allow for overclocking. H97 is going to be the mainstream model and X99 will address high-end desktop market segment.

Z97 is going to support Intels upcoing Haswell refresh CPU, which go by the codename "Devil's Canyon". Like Z87 and Z77 before, Z97 will support three PCI-Express 3.0 slots directly wired to the CPU and up to three graphics cards can be handeled at the same time: x16/NC/NC, x8/x8/NC and x8/x4/x4. Another neat feature you'll be getting with Z97 and H97 is a PCI-Express M.2 storage slot, which offers substantially more bandwidth than SATA 6 Gbps and therefore furhter open that bottleneck. Other than taht there will be six SATA 6 Gbps ports and they will all support Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST) as well as Smart Response Technology (SRT). In order to provide all other onboard components with plenty of bandwidth eight PCI-Express Gen 2.0 lanes will handle 14 USB Ports and six USB 3.0 ports.

In case of the X99 chipset on which Haswell-E HEDT processors will placed, up to five PCI-Express x16 slots can be put on upcoming motherboards. Combinations can be as follows: x16/NC/x16/NC/x8, x16/NC/x8/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8/x8. Regarding storage options you can connect up to 10 SATA 6 Gbps drives and since there are up to five PCI-Express Gen 3.0 expansion slots, you can put in a PCI-Express SSD as well as a four graphics cards in SLI or CrossFire.






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